The Quest

by Max Brand

  “Rory,” said Paradise Al, “you’re a wonderful man.”

  “Am I?” said the other.

  “You are,” replied Al, “but there’s one trouble ahead of you. I can see it coming.”

  “What, Paradise?”

  “A gun accident.”

  “Gun accident?” echoed the man of the beard, the softness passing instantly out of his eyes.

  “Yes, gun accident.”

  “Where, Paradise? What are you talking about?”

  “Gun accident. Right here in this room. Gun going off and the bullet will split your wise head open right between the eyes.”

  “Paradise,” said the other, “what’s the matter?” He leaned forward and spread out a hand confidingly flat on the top of the table.

  “Can’t you guess, Rory?” asked the young fellow.

  “I haven’t any idea.”

  “Reach in your pockets and you may find some ideas,” said Paradise Al.

  The other paused. Then he shook his head. “Can’t imagine what you mean,” he said.

  “All right. This house needs a christening, and just now I feel like christening it with red,” said Paradise Al. “Say your prayers, Rory.”

  “You mean . . . ? Ah-ha!” cried Pendleton, not in the least embarrassed. “You young fox, you had counted the money, eh? Oh, I thought you weren’t as simple as that. But, ah, Paradise, to put temptation in the path of an old man like me. Very sad. I wouldn’t have believed it of you.” His hearty laughter rang and re-rang through the cabin. And from inner pockets he took out several sheaves of bills and added them to the pile on the table. “Making, altogether,” he said, “a hundred and seventeen thousand dollars one hundred and something . . . I forget what.” Again he beamed on the other. “There you are, Paradise,” he said. “And there are no hard feelings, eh?”

  Al put the Colt away. Then he stepped to the table, thumbed two of the piles of bills, and gave them, with a few additional hundreds, to the blackmailer. “There’s your money,” he said. He passed it across.

  “Thanks a lot, son,” said Pendleton. He stood up, sliding the money carelessly into a deep coat pocket. “And now,” he said, making a wide gesture almost of embrace, “you see what you’ve done for me, Paradise. You’ve remade the world for me. You’ve given me a chance to die happily after some more years of quiet, steady work. The simplicity of my life, Paradise, will be a thing that would amaze you if you were to see it. And see it you will, because, with all of that remaining money, you’ll want to take a trip abroad.”

  “All this remaining money goes to the bank tonight,” said the young man.

  “What?”

  “To the bank,” insisted Paradise Al. “To Taggert, to put it otherwise.”

  The mouth of Pendleton fell open. “Great Scott!” he cried.

  Paradise Al smiled at him. “Queer idea, eh?” he said.

  “Queer? It’s crazy, I tell you. Ah, but I see, I see, Paradise. You don’t want your own hands soiled, after all. And I don’t blame you. Not a young fellow of your age, with life before him. You want to be clean. But give that money back to Murderer Taggert, who’s ruined so many harmless lives? Give it back to him? He ought to be bled, and you’ve done the bleeding. No, no, son, if you want to give that money away, give it to someone who will know how to distribute it where there is crying poverty. When I think what good could be accomplished with such a sum in a place like the Riviera, for instance, and you could safely entrust it to me, Paradise, because I already have all that I need for my modest needs.”

  Paradise Al pointed toward the door. “Get!” he ordered.

  “Ah, my son, I’m sorry to see you in this humor,” said the old blackmailer. “Suspicion breeds black thoughts, Paradise, and hard feelings. I’m sorry to see you in this mood.”

  “If you ever see me again in any mood,” said Al, “I promise you the bullet that you ought to have today, Pendleton. You’re a hound, and a sneaking hound. You’ve stuck a knife in me . . . and now get out of my sight.”

  “Savage words, Paradise.” The other sighed. “But I see that it’s not a time to argue. I won’t attempt to stand up against the storm. Well, my son, heaven bless you. I’ll go hitch up the mustangs to the buckboard and drive along. But I’m a sad man.”

  “Rory,” said Al, “I’ve stood about all that I can manage. Now move.”

  And Rory Pendleton moved.

  Paradise Al watched him finally jogging away in the buckboard, controlling the horses with singular skill in spite of the looseness of the rein that he held on them.

  Bouncing and bumping over the rough ground, the buckboard climbed the slope, and now, over the skyline, came Molly Drayton, galloping her horse. She halted beside the buckboard. They talked a few minutes. Paradise Al saw them shake hands, saw the rascal drive on, then turn to throw a kiss after Molly, and he saw the girl herself come riding on, happily smiling.

  She threw herself down from the saddle and ran to Paradise Al.

  “Al Pendleton,” she said, “I met Father on the way. I heard about the whole silly business, and . . . ”

  “Stand away, Molly,” he said.

  She had her arms stretched out to him already. Now she paused and frowned at him, shaking her head.

  “What in the world is wrong, Al?” she said.

  “I’m coming clean,” he said. “That’s all that’s wrong.”

  “Clean?” said the girl. “What do you mean?” She grew pale. She stood, almost on tiptoe, with her arms stiffly extended at her sides and her fists clenched.

  And Paradise Al, staring at her, thought that all the glory and the happiness in the world was centered in her slender body and gathered into the blue of her eyes.

  His breast began to heave, for he was short of wind, as though he had been working hard uphill. It was desperately hard to do, but he had known the moment she came over the skyline that he would have to do it.

  “What have you been thinking about me, Molly?” he asked. “My past, I mean.”

  “Your past?” she said, growing paler still. “I don’t know, Al. I haven’t been thinking much about the past. I’ve been too busy with our happiness right here in the present.”

  “You haven’t asked any questions,” he said. “No, you’ve dodged ‘em. That’s what you’ve done.” He shuddered, and then got hold of himself again. “But you’ve heard rumors, though,” he went on. “Everybody out here has heard ‘em . . . about a past in which I was a tramp, a safe-cracker, and a gambler. You’ve heard those things, Molly. And you’ve believed ‘em.”

  “Never!” she contradicted.

  “You have,” he answered grimly. “Otherwise you would have asked me questions about what happened, about the truth. No, you were afraid of the truth.”

  She made a blind, sweeping gesture. “I don’t care about the past. There isn’t any past for people who come out to the range. The past is forgotten. There’s room out here in the mountains to let a man live a new life and accept him for it. Besides . . . ”

  He lifted his hand and she was silent.

  “Molly,” he said, “it’s all true. Every word. I’ve been all kinds of a thug. I’ve cracked safes. I cracked the Taggert safe last night.”

  XIII

  She started to answer, and then paused. “I’ll tell you what, Al,” she said finally in a low voice. “You’re trying to make a joke of me, or to test me, or something similar to that. Isn’t that the fact?”

  He shook his head. “I mean it, Molly,” he said. “I’ve been playing a kind of a part, and a pretty bad part, at that, and I’m sick of it. I thought that I could work the thing, but I can’t. I’ve been shamed by sort of a human devil. I mean . . . well, I can’t name him, even. Only, I tell you, Molly, that I’ve got to show you the truth. I’m not what I’ve seemed to be.”

  Still staring at him with the look of a sleepwalker, at last she exclaimed: “Oh, Al, I know that men are tempted . . . men who can do things with their hands and who have courage! They’re
tempted when they’re young, and you’re still young, Al. No matter what you’ve been through, you’re young. You can change. You have changed.”

  He looked gloomily at her. As the sense of his own wrongdoing overwhelmed him, he stated suddenly: “Molly, even the name that I’ve carried out here isn’t the right one. I’m not a Pendleton!”

  The last vestige of color left her face then. And he, sick at heart, waited for an answer and received none.

  “I’m going back into the cabin,” he said. “You can think it over out here in the sunshine, and, when you’ve made up your mind what you’re going to say, come and tell me.”

  So he turned from her slowly, because he hoped each second that there would be an outbreak of emotion and love from her that would bring her running to him. But there was no spoken word, there was not a sound to give him a pretense for pausing as he went into the house and sat down wretchedly, with his head between his hands.

  He did not regret even then the impulse that had made him confess. Now he took his hands away from his face and lifted his head, for he felt that it was a shameful thing to be bowed like that, like a dog cringing in a corner when the crisis came. He had better be up and doing. No, he had better sit there calmly and face the future.

  But there was no future when Molly Drayton was taken away from him. She would not be taken, though. There was too much red blood in her for that. After all, it was not with a name that she had fallen in love. That was not the thing. She had loved him for himself, in spite of the fact that she thought that he belonged to the rival clan.

  A sound of hoof beats began very slowly, a mere scuffling through the short grass, but it brought him with a leap to the doorway.

  It was Molly Drayton, riding away from him!

  She was bowed a little in the saddle, her hands were folded upon the pommel, and, although he could not see her face, he felt that she was suffering. Then why did she leave him like this without speaking?

  “Molly!” he cried, that word involuntarily breaking from him.

  At that she started, but she did not turn. And second by second the distance between them lengthened.

  He ran out a few steps from the door, but still she did not turn, and now pride welled up in him and stopped his voice altogether. It was not right. Neither in man nor in woman was it right simply to turn the back upon a problem as she was turning hers now.

  He could not believe it. He looked wildly back through all that he knew of her, and the only fault that he could find in her was a sort of fierce and almost masculine impulsiveness. There was no weakness of heart or affection in her. She was almost too guilty of those very emotions. But there was the fact, shattering to all preconceptions—she was going straight off from the house. She was leaving him, and all of the future life that they had planned with such joy together now dwindled into ghosts, mere phantoms.

  She reached the brow of the farthest slope and sank beyond it, the horse first, then the rider to the shoulders, and finally the hat disappeared, and he was left alone.

  He thought that he had known pain before, but it was not at all like this. There was no comparison. This was a sickness of the very soul.

  At last he turned away toward the house. But it struck him with a sense of revolt when he faced it. All of the work that he had poured out on it was to him a poisoned thing because he had not a single thought connected with the house that was not connected with the girl, also. She was gone, and everything that had to do with her was grief to him.

  Sullivan whinnied from the pasture, and now he saw the great red stallion standing in the field, hanging his head over the topmost bar.

  Like the yielding of a dam, his will gave way, and his pride. Stinging tears rushed into his eyes, and he went forward half blindly to the pasture fence. He put his arms around the smooth, hard neck of the horse; he buried his face against the mane of Sullivan and remained there for a long moment, shuddering violently, not daring to move lest the very sky over him might see the convulsion of his sorrow.

  And Sullivan stirred not a muscle. All his foolish little tricks of hunting through pockets for sugar or apples, his ways of nudging at hand or shoulder, his inquisitive sniffing at the face of his master, were forgotten now. Still as the fence he stood.

  Marveling at this understanding of his mood, the young man mastered himself finally. He began to speak to Sullivan and caress his silky neck. His voice was shaking, and he wondered a little at that.

  When they gave him the third degree for ninety-six hours, he had not weakened. Not when his nerves were screaming out for lack of sleep, not when his brain was battered out of all poise. Not for a single instant had he weakened. But the girl, at a single stroke . . .

  Well, he knew what it meant, he felt, to be shot through the heart, to have come to the end of things. After this, to die would be no more than a silly, unimportant little gesture.

  He whistled Sullivan to the shed and put a saddle on him, and then rode off on the range. He did not speak. He touched the stallion neither with hand nor heel.

  Presently, looking out of his dream for a moment, he drew out his watch and saw with amazement that it was late afternoon. He could not believe it, unless time had taken wings. He held the watch to his ear, but it was ticking steadfastly. He glanced toward the sun and saw that it was sinking. Yes, some hours had dropped out of his life and left behind them only the poignancy of sorrow. So he turned back toward the cabin, and was amazed to see the miles he had come on Sullivan at a walk.

  He fed the stallion again, entered the cabin, and swept up the stolen money from the table. He stuffed it carelessly into the saddlebag and set about preparing a meal. He was not hungry, but he told himself that he would go through the mechanical motions of life until, perhaps, some savor of existence returned to him.

  Wise men said that time healed even wounds as deep as this. And perhaps time would. But it was hard to believe. He felt that he was dying. He had the impulse of a dreadful homesickness to go somewhere—somewhere that was not on this earth.

  So he cooked the meal of bacon and fried potatoes and found, as he sat down, that he had forgotten the coffee. That hardly mattered. Nothing mattered.

  Presently he found that it was so dark that he could not see, except with difficulty, his plate and the food upon it. The potatoes were half eaten, and those that remained were icy-cold. The strips of bacon were glued to the plate by their own congealed oozings of white fat. Time once more had slipped away from his enchanted life. Hours had gone, and the evening was there before him.

  He thanked God that he had something definite to do to take him away from the cabin. To have remained there would have driven him, he felt, to madness—with the lamplight pouring over him and the outer darkness, great and cold, extending over the mountains.

  He fumbled along the wall through the dusk to find his sombrero, and his fingers touched a bit of soft, fluffy cloth. His hand closed on it like a vise. He wanted to leave it, but he could not. It held him like an electric current, for he knew that it was the red woolen scarf that Molly had left behind her the day before.

  “How pretty she looked,” said a voice. He started, but then he realized that it was his own voice.

  And something like a resistless hand now bowed his head lower and lower, until his face was close to the scarf, and suddenly he caught it up with both hands in a brief frenzy. There was a faint, sweet odor of perfume about it, a mere hint of fragrance that came into his mind’s eye the picture of her and brought her walking straight into his heart.

  He could not wait after that. The saddlebag was already slung over his left shoulder, and, without waiting further to find his sombrero, he staggered out of the cabin into the open air. There he stood, uncertain, gasping in his breath, for he felt that he would choke.

  People spoke sometimes of a swelling heart. And now he knew well what they meant. There was Sullivan, however. There was faithful old Sullivan. Well, if men and women could be created with natures like the stallion’s, th
is world would be a paradise to live in.

  He got to the shed, saddled the horse, and then, instead of mounting, he walked on over the hills, with the stallion following him behind. It was better that way.

  XIV

  Now, in the meantime, and well before this, of course, Rory Pendleton had driven in his buckboard to Jumping Creek. He was fairly well satisfied with the outcome of his endeavors. He had got his $20,000, for one thing. Furthermore, there was the possibility that he might tap this deep well of prosperity again and again in the future. Not immediately, of course, for he realized that Paradise Al was a fellow who could be led only a few steps at a time.

  He was, as has been said above, fairly well satisfied, this Rory Pendleton, artist by profession, and callous adventurer by choice, but he was not thoroughly content. He had $20,000, a good fat haul. But what was it compared with the $100,000 that Al had kept? It was very little indeed. $20,000 was a year or two of real comfort. $100,000 was a dignified fortune.

  He told himself that he would not have cared so much had the money really been used by the thief who stole it, but that strange young man had declared his intention of returning it to the hands of Wallace Taggert! He would as soon have seen this handsome fortune cast over a ship’s rail into the unappreciative sea. And just as he would have made, at least, a gesture to save the world from such a loss, so his wits were making a gesture now, in the hopes of redeeming this money from wastage, for such he honestly felt it to be.

  Now, there is a saying that when a man is seriously bent on a project, Providence will place the tools in his hands sooner or later. With Mr. Pendleton it was rather sooner than later. As he halted his rig in front of the biggest hotel in Jumping Creek and got out to tether it, he saw two men who were seated on the verandah scowl at him, and then commence to talk to each other.

  It sent a singular chill up the spine of Rory Pendleton when he observed this. There were various little counts in various parts of the world that might cause police agents to be extremely interested in his whereabouts. That pair on the verandah had something about them that suggested either heelers of the law or followers of crime. And the law was nearer to the thoughts of Pendleton, with $20,000 in his coat. Distinctly he meant something to them, and distinctly they meant nothing to him, so far as he could remember. He did not recall ever having seen their faces before this moment.